Do you know what this number (E22b) is on the corner of a tablecloth? I suspect many folk of the younger generations do not. It is a laundry mark. Each week the laundry would be collected from the house by a laundry firm like The Lune and every household had its own laundry mark so that the items could be identified when they came out of the wash. Some of the laundry marks were on tags whilst others were written in indelible ink in the corner of the item. Both Mum and Nana used The Lune.
Stan Kelly’s Liverpool Lullaby – as sung by The Spinners - celebrates The Lune in this verse –
"Although you have no silver spoon,
Better days are coming soon,
Our Nelly's working at the Lune,
And she gets paid on Friday."
The Lune Laundry was on the north side of Lawrence Road, Wavertree, beside the railway embankment. It was demolished in 1987 to make way for the Rose Court housing development.
